I Can't Possibly Be Wrong All the Time

HBO finally released a longer trailer for House of the Dragon, Season Three (there’s been a few teaser trailers, but this was a proper one.)

With the third season airing almost at the end of June, I found myself with the time to write another Westeros-related post for #WesterosWednesday. I decided it was time for another entry in my series of questionable In Defense of [Problematic Character] posts. This time, about Ser Criston Cole.

Hold your boos until after I’ve made my case, please. (Feel free to boo me in the comments. Lack of comments obviously means Criston Cole is beloved.)

To start things off, like most correct-thinking humans, I acknowledge that Ser Criston Cole is pretty terrible. Suboptimal boyfriend … bad wedding attendee … unsafe around elder statesmen with differing succession viewpoints…

This is not going to be a blanket Ser-Criston-Cole-has-done-nothing-wrong type of defense. In general, I respect and acknowledge the complaints that the Kingmaker-detractors have.

Mostly.

Occasionally, they go overboard and their dislike of Cole breeds some crazy statements.

I won’t waste my time rebutting statements like he’s ugly and his haircut in Season Two made him uglier (Fabien Frankel is objectively handsome, I don’t need to sully this essay entertaining opposing spurious viewpoints.)

Instead, I will defend his right to exist.

To do so, I need to share some personal context.

SHOULD CRISTON COLE JUST BE DEAD? (Bob Says ‘Yes’)

Back when I was blogging about Game of the Thrones, I loved having debates with my ex-boss Bob. He hadn’t read the books and for years I would successfully goad him into making predictions for the upcoming seasons.

Would I gloat when he was invariably wrong? No, that would be mean of me. And I wanted him to keep on making predictions.

But, occasionally he’d form an opinion that would encourage me to write a blog post challenging his claim. For science, or whatever.

• Bob Claim: The Ice Wall is dumb and should have been made of fire! (A fire that burns for 8000 years? No, Bob.)
• Bob Claim: The Riverlanders would have wiped out the Freys long ago! (Bob, the Riverlanders in the long ago past were not watching Game of Thrones Season 3…)
• Bob Claim: The Night’s Watch oath doesn’t forbid sex! (If you say so, Bob, but it is 100% talked about as being penalizable – look, I’m not re-litigating that topic in this post.)

Recently, I was having lunch with Bob (a weekly tradition) and to encourage him to make some predictions about the upcoming season of HotD, I gave him an overview of where all the characters were, where the armies were, what fleets were on the waves, and the distribution of dracocratic power.

Also, I reminded him of the interpersonal politics of the relationships between characters, which included the detail that Queen Alicent and kingsguard Lord Commander Criston Cole had been carrying on romantically at the beginning of Season Two.

Bob doesn’t like Criston Cole (not an unreasonable opinion for one to have, especially if one is rooting for Rhaenyra) and he is very irritated that Cole is having sex with Alicent (hey, it’s none of my business what’s happening among consenting adults in the Red Keep), and he’s hoping that Cole dies soon.

In fact, Bob stated to me that Cole should be dead already, for having sex with Alicent.

Bob: The kingsguard aren’t supposed to be having sex –
Me: Just like that other chaste sworn brotherhood, the Night’s Watch?
Bob: You already said you aren’t re-litigating that. Anyway, he can be killed for breaking his vows and having sex with the queen. Someone must know what’s going on, and naturally they would have ratted him out.
Me: Really? You feel that the queen couldn’t have clandestine sex with a member of the kingsguard?

Bob: Impossible! Someone would know and they’d tell.
Me: What if the queen had reliably loyal servants who knew better than to inform on her or just wouldn’t dare to do so?

Bob: It’s too shocking a scandal! That secret wouldn’t be a secret long. And with creepy Larys spying on everyone, you know that he’d know and would inform on Cole and then Cole would be killed.

Bob: Anyway, Cole not being killed already for this is unbelievable. Did they fool around in the book?
Me: The official account in Fire and Blood doesn’t address this, no.
Bob: See, it was made up by the showrunners! GRRM would never have such a suspension-of-disbelief-breaking plot point!

I don’t want to chide Bob too much – I understand that he doesn’t like Criston Cole and doesn’t like seeing the lovely Alicent involved with him.

Ser Criston Cole: Relatable! Once upon a time I was really into this cute girl, and seeing her betrothed to someone else and also flirting with her uncle caused me to do some over-the-top stuff. I get where this Ser Bob is coming from.

Could Alicent and Cole keep their bedroom activities a secret? Maybe? I don’t see why not. There are probably historical parallels of royal infidelity and of course the in-universe Lannister-centric parallel I’ve been alluding to above.

George certainly thinks Jaime and Cersei could keep their incestuous affair under the radar for fifteen years or so; they smashed enough to produce three golden-haired offspring. Maybe people knew (Varys likely knew at least) but if anyone did know, they kept quiet about it. Or they didn’t get the chance to inform or were paid off.

The Ghost of Ned: I might have been the first to realize?
The Ghost of Jon Arryn: Oh, you.
The Ghost of Ser Hugh: Let’s get back to the essay.

Alicent and Ser Criston didn’t seem to be particularly bedroom-intimate in Season 1; maybe this situationship had only been going on shortly after Viserys died, but even if the younger Queen Alicent was seeing more of the handsome royal bodyguard than was strictly proper starting sometime in the mid-season time jump, the period of time that a potential affair could have happened isn’t longer that Cersei’s ongoing sexual relationship with the Kingslaying Queenlaying kingsguard, Ser Jaime.

Maybe people in the Red Keep know about Alicent and Criston – but if they do they just aren’t talking about it, which seems in line with the royal household discretion established in the main series books.

Bob: Cole should be dead because of this!
Me: I know that your heart wants this, but your heart is not thinking this through.
Bob: By the way, I object to you inventing this dialogue for me.
Pat: It is unfair, I agree, but you are allowed to start up your own blog to post rebuttals.
Bob: Being retired takes up too much of my time. You’ll see, when you retire one day.

My Verdict: It isn’t narratively crazy that Criston Cole still exists.

*gavel – concludes the case*

Epilogue: Why a Ser Criston Cole Defense?

I am aware that even though I feel Ser Criston is one of the villains in this story and he wronged Rhaenyra whose legitimate claim to the throne I respect (as far as I can have any investment in a fictional monarchy: I support the notion of a democratic government) – I do have a bias in support of Ser Criston, rather than a bias against him as many do.

Why is that?

In Fire and Blood, Cole is presented more neutrally, although he is solidly an Aegon supporter over Rhaenyra. He does kill Laenor Velaryon’s boyfriend Ser Joffrey Lonmouth, although it takes place in the context of a martial tourney so it is far less transgressive than the betrothal feast mayhem.

Joffrey Lonmouth: Either way, I got killed. Why are you writing this during Pride Month, you monster? J’accuse!

When House of the Dragon’s first season initially aired, the fan-base that had been active during Game of Thrones re-energized. Tweets were tweeted, inactive Thrones podcasts became active again, it was heartening to see all the excitement.

But, I felt that some of the discretion that the book readers exhibited for the previous show was not quite as present with House of the Dragon. As casting was announced and the actors would engage with fans, the anti-Team Green bias seemed fairly prominent and vocal.

In particular, people were not shy to express their displeasure with Ser Criston Cole. Not that they were criticizing the actor so much (thank goodness for that basic level of media awareness) but more about hating on the character.

The show hadn’t even aired yet.

I understand that people will act how they want, but I felt it was a shame that there was this willingness to signal things that would otherwise be learned by the experience of watching the show. In contrast, people hadn’t explicitly opined about how much they hated Petyr Baelish, or Walder Frey, or Roose Bolton before the original season started.

Often, the book reading community had been more circumspect, which worked to keep non-book-readers in the dark. There was no harm in publicly saying that David Bradley’s Walder Frey looked appropriately like a crabby old man because Frey was immediately presented as a crabby old man. You aren’t spoiling anyone with that info.

But Criston Cole was romantic-hero-coded when first presented on the show. Publicly hating on him prematurely gave off spoilery negative vibes to non-book readers. Let them experience his heel-turn!

To combat that underlying vibe, before the first season of HotD started I chose to be very conspicuously pro-Criston Cole, just to run some interference to the spoilery negativity.

Unexpectedly, the pro-Cole sentiment seemed to take root in me and now I feel the urge to defend him more than I really need to. I can’t explain it.

Queen Alicent: No one can truly explain our relationship, either. He’s just maddeningly dreamy. And repulsive. And so hot. Is it hot in here?

I do find him an interesting character, stuck in a lifetime toxic work environment perpetually caught in the middle of a power struggle between two women with their own complicated frenemy relationship, with relatively high stakes – if Rhaenyra ascends to the Iron Throne, Cole is a dead man.

Bob: Yes. YES.
Rhaenyra: Yes.
Lord Beesbury: I hadn’t thought about that.

Cole is also a notable character in that, with the tragic demise of the Queen Who Never Was (Rhaenys Targaryen), he’s the primary character on the show expressing his misgivings about dragons being part of the conflict.

I feel that that makes him enough of an interesting character to keep around, so I’m not really too eager to see him killed off anytime soon.

Wrapping Up

Wow, this was way longer than it should have been. I honestly had intended to just talk about how the Cole-Alicent carrying-on was not that extraordinary compared to the Lannister twins archetypal canoodling, but somehow it expanded into me talking about my feelings.

I blame Ser Criston. He just has this way about him. He’s so dreamy.

---

(Comments are always welcome. Super welcome! But if you want to talk spoilery Game of Thrones talk with me (also welcome) I’d invite you to visit my Safe Spoilers page on my backup blog. That way my non-book-reading friends won’t be shocked with foreknowledge.)

Images are from HBO’s Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon (obviously). The illustration of cute Ser Criston Cole is from the artist @peregrinnno on Twitter. I make no claim to any of the images, but some claims to the text. So there.

If you liked this article, thank you! I have all of my Game of Thrones related articles on my handy-dandy Game of Thrones page should you want to read more but don’t want to navigate around my site.

© Patrick Sponaugle 2026 Some Rights Reserved